Chapter 56

The sight appeared so scandalously undignified that Myeong-joo let out a breathless scoff. Each time Yi-tan touched and licked his body, Myeong-joo felt completely alienated from himself, as though inhabiting a stranger’s flesh. Perhaps he would never truly grow accustomed to these bizarre sounds spilling from his throat or the searing sensations piercing his core. Besides, for a grown man’s nipple to appear so vividly pink felt utterly absurd.

Whether Yi-tan shared the thought or not, he scrutinized the glistening nub with far greater intensity than before. Desperate to shield it from view, Myeong-joo tried to pull away, but his pinned arms rendered him helpless.

“Let go of my arms,” Myeong-joo pleaded in embarrassment.

“I refuse. Why would I ever surrender such an exquisitely presented feast?”

Delivering the playful retort with a wicked grin, Yi-tan descended upon the opposite side. The neglected peak had long since stood rigid in the chilly tent air, as though eagerly awaiting its turn to receive the young man’s mouth. The moment Yi-tan’s hot breath brushed across the skin, blood rushed to the tip in violent affirmation.

“Ngh…!”

His chin dropped involuntarily against the crown of Yi-tan’s dark head as he panted for breath. Entirely indifferent to Myeong-joo’s protests, Yi-tan devoted himself to licking and nursing the second nipple with greedy hunger. Each flick of that rough tongue elicited sharp shivers and involuntary gasps from Myeong-joo’s lips. By the time Yi-tan finally released him, both nipples were blazing crimson, swollen taut with heat.

“Did you know a trace of harmonization comes out here too?” Yi-tan asked with a low chuckle.

Even as he asked with an amused smile, his dark eyes never strayed from Myeong-joo’s chest. He visually devoured the saliva-damp peaks before planting wet, smacking kisses over each bud, behaving as though he were conversing with the flesh itself rather than Myeong-joo.

“The more I suck, the sweeter the flow, almost like…”

“Stop, stop it…!” Myeong-joo cried in acute distress.

Though Yi-tan had left the end of the sentence unsaid, Myeong-joo had no desire to hear whatever lewd comparison was about to follow. Twisting with all his remaining strength, he freed one arm and clamped his palm firmly over Yi-tan’s mouth.

Gagged by Myeong-joo’s hand, the young officer simply looked up at him with a docile, compliant expression, his dark eyes sparkling just as they had during his cadet days. The sheer brazen innocence stunned Myeong-joo into shaking his head in defeat.

“Refrain from such remarks. It is unbearable to hear.”

He knew full well that scolding with flushed cheeks would likely be dismissed as the absurd petulance of an older man, yet having blurted the complaint like a whining child, he could hardly take it back. While Myeong-joo wished he could keep his hand clamped over the rogue’s mouth indefinitely, Yi-tan nodded obediently with a smothered snicker, stripping him of any further excuse to hold him down.

The moment Myeong-joo pulled his hand away in awkward surrender, Yi-tan beamed with a wide, curving smile, effortlessly lifting Myeong-joo by the hips once more to deposit him onto the cot.

The cold touch of the blanket against his bare back left Myeong-joo feeling acutely unsettled and helpless. He wanted to cure this overwhelming vulnerability when sharing a bed with the younger man. If only he could master harmonization quickly, perhaps this agonizing awkwardness would recede, allowing him to channel energy to Yi-tan with greater poise and gentleness.

“I am terribly clumsy at this, aren’t I? Acting so ridiculous at my age,” Myeong-joo muttered with a rueful smile. Though he delivered the self-assessment in an open tone, he could not entirely conceal the embarrassed humiliation woven beneath his chuckle. “Leaving everything to someone younger than me… it is simply that I am completely unaccustomed to it.”

“Why would you say such a thing?” Yi-tan replied softly.

Shedding his undergarments, Yi-tan climbed onto the narrow cot and stretched out beside him, the playful smile still gracing his handsome features. Hooking a forefinger into the waistband of Myeong-joo’s briefs, he slid them down in one fluid motion. As the fabric caught around his knees, Myeong-joo instinctively shielded his groin with both hands. Yet Yi-tan simply lifted Myeong-joo’s ankles, stripping the cloth away entirely.

In an instant, both men lay completely naked. Cupping his fully engorged shaft, Yi-tan stroked it in a slow, loose rhythm before looking up.

“I find it fascinating, rather. There is an unexpected pleasure in it, and I truly hope you might enjoy it as well, Instructor.”

“As for me, well…”

Myeong-joo managed only an awkward, trembling grimace of a smile. Feeling Yi-tan’s unblinking gaze piercing straight through him, he slowly let the smile fade. The unblinking intensity in those dark eyes felt profoundly foreign, stirring a prickle of guilty unease that made him want to scratch his cheek.

As though divining his turmoil, Yi-tan leaned down to press a tender kiss to Myeong-joo’s temple before sealing their lips once more in a series of wet, smacking pecks. While it lacked the bizarre eroticism of having his nipples suckled, a heavy, sinking ache settled deep beneath his ribs.

“When I left you behind at the hotel…” Yi-tan began softly.

“…”

“Watching the numbers decrease on the elevator panel was nearly unbearable,” Yi-tan confessed with a wry smile. He spoke with an amused grin, yet a faint blush dusted his cheekbones—a tender rose entirely divorced from the blood-spattered fury that had punched through a demonic fiend’s chest hours earlier. “I nearly rode straight back up just to kiss you again before I left.”

“…”

“That was how wonderful it was,” Yi-tan whispered, hovering over him.

With those words, Yi-tan mounted him completely.

Had it truly been so? Could I really have given him such pleasure? Unlike Myeong-joo, who had treated that morning as the final severance of his unrequited love, Yi-tan’s eyes shone with the boyish excitement of a man in love.

In the very moment Myeong-joo puzzled over their disparate memories, the heavy weight bearing down upon him pressed their groins flush together. Every nerve in Myeong-joo’s body snapped to attention. Yi-tan’s shaft was already slick with pre-seminal fluid.

Hesitant, Myeong-joo glanced down between their bodies.

“What is the matter?”

“No… I was merely wondering when you had time to oil your cock…” Myeong-joo stammered honestly.

Having blurted his candid bewilderment aloud, Myeong-joo received only absolute silence in return, prompting him to lift his gaze toward Yi-tan.

“…”

“…”

Their gazes collided in midair. Backlit by the flickering gas lantern, deep cast shadows obscured Yi-tan’s features, transforming his usual hazel irises into pools of impenetrable black. Lacking any glint of light, it felt like locking eyes with an apex predator measuring its prey.

Slowly, Yi-tan’s lips curved into a sharp, dangerous smirk. “It seems drooling in anticipation made it look as though it were coated in oil. I must let you verify for yourself, Instructor.”

“No, I only—”

“Whether something was applied or not, you need only taste it for yourself,” Yi-tan growled huskily.

With that declaration, Yi-tan began grinding his hips forward with deliberate, crushing friction. His thick, wet cock stroked relentlessly over Myeong-joo’s semi-hard length, the narrow camp cot creaking violently beneath their shifting weight. Because Yi-tan refused to avert his gaze, Myeong-joo could not close his eyes either. Pinned by that relentless stare, he had to endure the searing contact as their shafts rubbed and stroked together, the flared rim of Yi-tan’s head gliding along his length with friction so intense it verged on torment.

“Ah, ngh…!”

“Ah, hah…”

Yi-tan’s heavy panting fell against Myeong-joo’s ear. His chest heaved violently as ragged breaths tore from his throat. Brow furrowing with desire, he dipped his head to kiss Myeong-joo deeply. His shaft was completely soaked, sliding with such slick friction that Myeong-joo felt intensely wronged. Beneath that unrelenting assault, Myeong-joo’s own flesh rapidly engorged with blood, swelling taut and hard until the crushing pressure twisted his face in acute sensitivity.

“Ngh, hah, ah…”

As Myeong-joo whimpered in overstimulation, Yi-tan abruptly sat back, grasping his own rigid length and pulling it upward against his lower belly before looking down between them. His gaze lingered on Myeong-joo’s cock, which had been pinned beneath his own.

Deprived of the intense friction, Myeong-joo’s shaft gave several involuntary, needy twitches in the open air. Though his chronic illness had long since quelled his morning erections, it was raging with unprecedented vigor today. Mortified to the core, Myeong-joo covered his burning face with both hands.

“Oil seems to be trickling from yours as well, Instructor,” Yi-tan teased with a wicked grin.

“…It is not.”

He blurted the denial with informal bluntness, utterly unable to concede the humiliating reality.

Watching him with momentary surprise, Yi-tan burst into hearty, ringing laughter and collapsed squarely atop him. The heavy weight wrung a breathless shiver from Myeong-joo’s frame. As their cocks brushed once more, Yi-tan’s muscular chest shook with uncontrollable laughter against Myeong-joo’s torso, rising and falling in an intoxicating rhythm.

“I found you,” Yi-tan murmured softly against his neck, the words entirely opaque to Myeong-joo. “I found you after all.”

He repeated the assertion as though reaffirming an absolute truth to himself. Just as Myeong-joo moved to pull his hands from his face to ask what on earth he meant, warm lips pressed against the exposed corner of his mouth.

Playful, smacking sounds echoed as Yi-tan planted affectionate kisses like a proud child stamping ink onto paper, making Myeong-joo feel so thoroughly teased that he parted his fingers slightly to peek out with one eye. Yi-tan laughed again—a radiant, uninhibited grin that lit up his entire face with genuine, unadulterated joy.

Why are you laughing like that? Myeong-joo wanted to ask, yet felt a strange reluctance to hear the answer. At this point, he had no desire to attach labels or definitions to every trivial detail, to every underlying reason, to everything unfolding between them. Instead, he simply curled the corners of his lips in imitation of Yi-tan—at first as if dumbfounded, but in the end, with heartfelt sincerity.

Their heaving chests met and parted in ragged unison.

Though their shafts remained rock-hard, slick and glistening with the fluid trickling from their urethras, the two men laughed in earnest. Why they were laughing, or what was so absurdly funny, neither asked the other.

***